It is understandably upsetting if you are one of the people who will be out of a job. There can be growing pains as the economy shifts. People who thought they were all set until retirement might have to find new jobs, and gain new skills.

But robots taking menial jobs means more time. Some people used their time to come up with robots that will save countless hours of human labor. Imagine what humans can come up with using all the new free time they created.

As challenging as that is, those people should rejoice. They are being given an opportunity to grow. Do you really want to do a job that can be done easier and cheaper by a robot? Why not use that big brain to do something really productive and fulfilling?

I don't know about you, but I never feel like I have enough time. I'm lucky to enjoy most of the things I do with my time. I am very thankful to enjoy my time making a living. But if I was suddenly out of work, I am confident that with those free hours I could quickly think of another way to earn a living. That is what a human brain is for.

And that is how robots advance civilization. They free up human capital to do even more amazing things than the robots are doing. And it is up to individuals to figure out how to make their time worthwhile.

One study says that 30% of all current working hours will be taken over by robots by 2030. That means almost a third of the work humans do right now will still get done. And humans can instead spend that time doing something more productive and fulfilling! That is amazing.

But the media pushes helplessness and fear.

"There are few precedents in which societies have successfully retrained such large numbers of people," the report says, and that is the key question: how do you retrain people in their 30s, 40s and 50s for entirely new professions?

This paragraph sums up the real problem with robots replacing jobs. People have the attitude that they are helpless. How do YOU retrain these people, the article asks. This is such a master-slave dynamic of thinking.

It is insulting to consider people in the 30's-50's utterly incapable of gaining new skills. You, me, the government, we don't have to do anything!

It is not our job to make sure people see the opportunity in this. Yes, I want to help empower people. But giving the government this type of power to herd the workers of the world into new careers is insanity! They don't know what the economy needs. They cannot possibly see what the future holds! They will waste tax dollars training these people for silly jobs, and they will waste these people's time in the same fashion.

These people will be best off by taking personal responsibility for their own retraining.

Just as they are now, wages may still not be sufficient for a middle-class standard of living. But "a healthy consumer class is essential for both economic growth and social stability," the report says. The U.S. should therefore consider income supplement programs, to establish a bottom-line standard of living.

The government wants to make ever more people dependent. Dependent people are easy to control.

It is so empowering taking control of your own life and setting the course for your future. But the government will entice people to take the "easy" way out. In the end, this will lead to personal and economic stagnation.

Ironically, a headline on one of the study's graphics makes the counterpoint. It says: "Jobs of the future: some occupations will grow, others will decline, and new ones we cannot envision will be created."

But not if people are pacified and robbed of their creative motivation. I'm not saying we need to watch people struggle to see if they will come up with something productive. But we cannot create an entire class of people who are content not using their brains to better themselves.